Fracking, Youngstown and The Right to the City

What happens when the Chamber of Commerce, labor leaders, and government officials, most of whom live outside the city, are pitted against a small yet influential group of community and university activists? That's what's going on right now in a debate over a ballot initiative that would prevent gas extraction by hydraulic fracturing — fracking — in Youngstown, Ohio. The proposed ordinance, Community Bill of Rights (CBR), is modeled on similar anti-drilling legislation in other Ohio communities that would largely block drilling, as well as shale gas extraction and injection wells, especially in urban areas.

This is the third attempt during the last two years to pass such legislation in Youngstown, and the vote has become closer each time. In the most recent try, 45 per cent supported the ordinance and 55 per cent opposed it. Supporters hope to shift the balance this time.

The underlying legal issue is whether local community restrictions can preempt Ohio’s legal framework for gas and oil drilling. Ohio is a home rule state where municipalities have authority "to exercise all powers of local self-government and to adopt and enforce within their limits such local police, sanitary and other similar regulations, as are not in conflict with general laws”. As proponents of the Youngstown ordinance point out, there is no exception in the Constitution for the oil and gas industry.

The Constitution would seem to give Youngstown the right to regulate fracking on the local level, but in 2004, the Ohio legislature passed a bill HB 278 explicitly denying that right. The bill was largely written by the oil and gas industry, which recruited support for it by flooding both Republicans and Democrats with campaign contributions, according to former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann. This happened before the industry expanded drilling in the Marcellus and Utica Shale regions of Eastern Ohio, suggesting that the industry knew it would encounter local resistance.

Resistance to fracking reflects concerns about the well-documented relationship between fracking and earthquakes, both nationally and in Youngstown, and related health concerns. But what makes the Youngstown fight so remarkable is the setting: a community with a long history of economic struggle.

Youngstown has been the poster child for deindustrialization and disinvestment since 1977. The city has lost over 30 per cent of its population in the last quarter century, and it has demolished over 3000 properties in the last five years. The average sale price for a home is $21,327. Other challenges include a median household income of $24,880 and a 36 per cent poverty rate. It’s also home to several prisons; one of every 20 residents is a prisoner. Alan Mallach, an urbanist and senior fellow of the National Housing Institute, notes that economic development efforts have not sufficiently addressed these problems, pointing out that “… factories or warehouses that the city has attracted usually move to the nearby suburbs, and four out of five jobs in the city are filled by people who commute from out of town.”

Those opposing the Community Bill of Rights capitalize on these difficulties. They have spent large sums to set up phone banks in black urban churches, promoting the idea that fracking will create jobs. Yet there is very little evidence that African Americans have benefited from the fracking industry, except as precarious laborers.

Many of those who are pushing for fracking don’t live in the city, and won’t have to live with its problems. These include Chamber members, labor unionists (especially the skilled trades), and city government employees who are exempted from local city residency requirements – a policy that contributed to the flight of middle-class white residents and the hollowing out of the city.

The difference between the influence of these non-residents and the less well-financed voices of those who live in the city has not been lost on Community Bill of Rights supporters. CBR leaders Ray and Susie Beiersdorfer, city residents and Youngstown State University geologists, recognize that the blitz of advertising by the oil and natural gas industry, promising future jobs, appeals to the largely working-class, mostly black residents who are most affected by the city’s high levels of poverty and unemployment. But as a group of YSU academics noted in a letter to a Youngstown newspaper, “The same can be said for the manufacturing of cigarettes, alcohol, drones, high-range missiles, and nuclear warheads.”

The proponents of the ban have been particularly troubled by the role of the city’s largest institution, Youngstown State University, and the resources it has accepted from the oil and gas industry. The impact of the university’s support of fracking has been powerful. YSU has downsized or abolished Humanities and Arts programs, while expanding its STEM (science, tech, engineering and math) college and trumpeting its training programs for promised oil and gas industry jobs that have yet to materialize in any significant degree. Some educators, like Deborah Mower, have argued that this should not be the role of the University: “Instead of merely responding to the industry need and ignoring the problems of fracking that have plagued the industry for decades, the university could create an epicenter for redressing their problems…. Perhaps lost in this discussion is the nature of education.”

CBR proponents agree with that sentiment, but they might also point out that what is really at stake is, as the organizers of an upcoming international conference phrase it, the “right to the city” versus the influence of non-residents (disclosure: I'll be speaking in May on so-called "smart shrinkage" at The Right to the City in an Era of Austerity (1973-2014) .

The oil and gas industry has spent over $100,000 to defeat the CBR, and proponents have been sued to keep it off the ballot. Meanwhile, the Beiersdofers and other CBR organizers increasingly believe that public health, science and the ballot box are being overpowered by money. But they won’t let that happen in Youngstown without a fight.

Interesting article from John Russo, as I found myself equally in agreement and disagreement with many of his points. An area of agreement is the fact that, from a land use perspective, the CBR is a proposed local government policy objecting to the imposition of a regional initiative that affects their property rights and their lives. In this country there has been a push for regionalization and even a trend of some federalization (listen to the policy proposals from the current HUD secretary Shaun Donovan, breathtaking in their overreach). So I support the desire of local officials and citizens to stand up for their rights on what should be a local land use issue. But I suspect that this is an isolated case of supporting local control of land use policy simply because it is in opposition to energy production, today's bogeyman. If the issue were one of an environmental group claiming state or regional jurisdiction over local land use policy, I suspect the people supporting CBR would be treated differently by the author.

And while I support energy exploration and hydraulic fracking personally, I think HB 278 is wrong and exceeds its jurisdiction. How can state law trump local zoning ordinances on what is clearly a land use issue? So I am opposed to the bill on constitutional grounds, not because those driving its passage were "oil and gas interests" with nefarious intent, but because it is exceeding its jurisdiction regardless of the nobility or lack thereof of the policy.

My areas of disagreement and frankly disappointment in the intellectual rigor and integrity of the author are found in his many asides tossed out as if they are facts.

The "except as precarious laborers" drips with elite condescension for industrial employment. There are many "precarious" jobs in the US-firemen, policemen, construction work, industrial plants, mining, trucking etc. and many people work these jobs, aware of the risk without thinking it is beneath them. Frankly it is the "precarious job" workers who keep this country running. Odd perspective for someone whose research focuses on the working class.

The identification of YSU's concentration on STEM curriculum in a negative light is strange. The lack of STEM skills throughout our country is one of the factors shaping our unemployment. There are many decent-paying blue collar jobs left unfilled today because of the STEM skills required to perform these same jobs. As an aside, this often seems to be presented as an either/or issue; not sure why you can't major in a STEM subject and minor in a humanities subject, or vice-versa.

"Well-documented" relationship between fracking and earthquakes? Really? There is a significant amount of research being performed by geo-physicists in this area, including by the energy companies doing the fracking for all the obvious reasons, but inconclusive at this point. And this topic of research and corresponding studies are well documented, but the conclusions are not, except maybe in the NY Times or popular science magazines.

The academics of course saying, “The same can be said for the manufacturing of cigarettes, alcohol, drones, high-range missiles, and nuclear warheads.” Got it. Loud and clear. Energy production is bad, like all these other things. Don't really know how to respond to this. Energy drives our economy. It drives the world.

this article is a bit one sided. eg
"Resistance to fracking reflects concerns about the well-documented relationship between fracking and earthquakes,"

only the anti-frackists believe that fracking is causing the earthquakes when in actuality a closer connect is made between waste disposal wells and earthquakes.

'Younger, environmentally-conscious city residents, including proponents of urban farming and sustainability, support the CBR" and the vast majority of these individuals ignore the evidence, history and science associated with fracking.

Fascinating that the fear-mongering continues unabated. "Fracking" was developed and perfected in and around Fort Worth in the late 1990s. In the past 15 years or so, 8,000+ wells have been drilled in Fort Worth and Tarrant County, generating billions of dollars of economic activity and thousands of jobs, while providing low-cost electricity and space heating for millions of Texans.

Visit the vibrant Texas locale and learn that "fracking" is an urban boon of the first magnitude. Find that the fear-mongers are selling lies.

Yes, isn't it ironic that the same libbewwal-lefty ideologues object to the use of Texas as an example of the right kind of governance to achieve economic progress, with the objection that "it is based on evil fossil fuel extraction", but they will also argue in other situations where the debate is whether to do fracking or not, that "it doesn't bring economic benefits anyway".......?